Mourning a Minnow: Bidding farewell to the Super Aguri F1 Team

Commendable though the team's spirit was, however, Super Aguri was always going to be dependent on Honda for engines and, as things turned out, for cash. The British facility was too small to design and construct its own cars like the major teams, all of which employ 300 or more people. Most F1 teams have their own full-time wind tunnel facilities, and Super Aguri became totally reliant on the Honda factory, which has four tunnels in Britain alone.For the 2007 season, and again in 2008, Super Aguri was gifted the chassis used by the Honda factory team in the previous year. This came as something of a bonus in 2007, when Honda's own new chassis proved to be a dog. The 2006 version, by contrast, had been a hot property, and in the hands of Sato and Davidson it regularly embarrassed factory drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.Right from the beginning, however, potential disaster loomed over Super Aguri. It has long been a fundamental requirement of F1 teams that they build their own cars, without recourse to using the intellectual property of an outside organization. It is impossible for journalists to familiarize themselves with the details of the rules, though, because they are part of the Concorde Agreement, a document which is jealously kept secret except between the teams, ostensibly because of its commercial sensitivity.It became clear late in 2006 that the FIA had proposed certain dispensations from Concorde for the future, and that some teams would be taking advantage of them in 2007, which was to be the final year of the agreement in its then form. Among the teams which decided to use non-original chassis design was Scuderia Toro Rosso, the satellite of the increasingly ambitious Red Bull Racing. Then, following the failure of the teams and the FIA to agree the terms of a new contract which would replace Concorde, writs started flying. The "copycat" teams have since conceded defeat.